Throughout its history, the Western library has played a significant role in bringing the book into the hands of Western scholars. That history includes constructs of Iibrarianship, publishing and scholarship as gatekeeping access to knowledge. Exploring significant events in the field from the time of the Lyceum to the present day in the development of repositories of books and their access by scholars allows an engagement with those events from a perspective that makes visible ways in which the production, storage and access of and to books, and scholarship itself, have been brought to the fore, while others have been largely ignored. An examination of current practice has implications for what this may mean for knowledge production in relation to the library, the book and Western scholarship in the twenty-first century. Such an approach to this history provides a resource for academics and students interested in understanding ways in which they themselves are connected with the traditions of their professions and the history of the book and its place in gatekeeping knowledge. The examination involves the various authorities' attempts to establish and maintain control of the production and dissemination of knowledge as manifested in books, and ranges from early Athens through mediaeval scriptoria to the printing press and electronic forms of book production [Introduction].